Opus 2011-257, Repentance That Isn’t

I was again listening to Alistair Begg.  It is a habit that is easy to get into.  Today he said something that almost made me pull off the freeway and give him a call.  He said, “Repentance is an Evangelical grace.”  He said he was quoting the Westminster Catechism.  He went on to explain that repentance is not something we do in order to get God to do something.  For a few moments he stopped being a Bible preacher and became a Reform Professor.  He got so carried away with what his books say that, in my opinion, he ignored what the Book says.  If you want to listen, the pod-cast date is 2/10/11.

Think about this.  If repentance is a gift that is only given to the elect, where does that leave the rest of humanity?  I have a picture of a TV game show like “Let’s Make a Deal” or “The Price Is Right.”  I see a mass of humanity jumping up and down yelling, “Me!  Me!  Pick me!”  And I see the game show host walking around with his microphone and finally approaching one of the frantic jumpers.  Or on “Let’s Make a Deal” when someone is called down I can just see them thinking in there mind, “Na, na, na, na, na, na, na.  I got picked and you didn’t.”

How can this be a gospel of hope?  To add to the mystery Begg later goes on and talks about how it is necessary to live the life because Hebrews says, “...without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.”  That is the same verse my pastor, an Arminian, was preaching on last Sunday.

You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t say that faith is a gift given to the elect and repentance is a gift given to the elect and then say you have to live right.  As the TV AI used to say, “Does not compute.”

I do not in any way de-Christianize these brothers.  I accept them as part of the family, even if they don’t accept me.  My concern is not their lives because many of them live in obedience.  My concern is that soul that is sitting around figuring that God will arbitrarily pick them, or not.  And while they are waiting they might as well enjoy the fruits of sin.

Some things I don’t understand are mysteries.  Some seem to be nonsense.  Of course I am sure someone will quote something about the cross being foolishness to those who are not being saved.

I prefer my security to theirs.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-205, Ecumenical Issues: Rome and the Book

I came across an interesting post at KEYBOARD THEOLOGIANS.  The discussion was about authority and when to kneel.  That was not what I found most interesting.  What got my attention was a quote they had from the Catholic Catechism,

"For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body"

This says that the Roman Catholic Church venerates the Bible as much as they venerate the host.  I have long known that the Roman Catholic Church believes that the bread is actually changed into the body of Christ and the wine is changed into His blood.  I was a chaplain’s assistant in the army and we were taught to show extra care and respect for any of the consecrated host that we might need to deal with.  Any extra bread was to be stored in a special tabernacle inside a gold lined container.  The cup was to be washed in a sink that drained onto the ground, not into the sewer.  When I cover the Reformation at school I tell the non-Catholics to never partake of communion in a Catholic church because that would be considered blasphemy. 

I had never heard they had that kind of respect for the written word.  That flies in the face of all the historical attempts to keep the word out of the hands of the common believer.  Perspective and motive can be gamechangers.  Maybe the reason for withholding Bibles was respect for the word and fear that it would be misused.  I don’t need to agree to understand.

We have always heard about how the Roman Catholic church placed the church and tradition in authority over scripture.  If you think about it, how is that any different from Calvin and Luther.  They just wanted to substitute themselves for the pope.  We want to substitute the local church.  We talk about individual conscience and such but most Protestants take the teaching of the pastor as the authority.  Even local churches have a statement of agreed faith.  The only exception is when those in authority say something they don’t like, but that is another issue.

When it comes down to it the Roman Catholic church has a lot of the same issues that we Protestants have.  They work things out differently but are also concerned with faith and practice.  The majority of people who attend and claim the label don’t pay that much attention to what they believe. 

We sound like the same knuckleheads that Paul was writing to in his letters.  Welcome to the church.

homo unius libri